AHL: Is there a Sharks shakeup in order?

Wednesday

Apr 2, 2014 at 10:48 PMApr 2, 2014 at 11:52 PM

As San Jose general manager Doug Wilson says, the Sharks are not a churn-and-burn organization, and their philosophy has worked pretty well at the NHL level since they have made the Stanley Cup playoffs for 10 straight seasons.

At the AHL level, though, patience has not been so virtuous. Assuming Worcester misses again this year, San Jose's AHL affiliates will have made the Calder Cup playoffs five times in 13 seasons going back to the days of the Cleveland Barons. There is a fine line between patience and indulgence.

This year's Sharks have not been a lousy team, but the last four seasons have been lousy ones when added up. San Jose has decisions to make on a lot of players from this season's team, so perhaps a shakeup is in order.

Players under contract for next season include forwards Freddie Hamilton, Danill Tarasov, Ryan Carpenter, Rylan Schwartz and Eriah Hayes, as well as defensemen Konrad Abeltshauser and Dylan DeMelo and goalie Troy Grosenick.

Chris Tierney and Barclay Goodrow will graduate from juniors to the AHL unless they pull a Tomas Hertl and go directly to San Jose. Forward Chris Crane and goalie J.P. Anderson are also under contract for next season.

There are five unrestricted free agents currently on the Worcester roster — John McCarthy, Chad Rau, Matt Pelech, Rob Davison and Bracken Kearns. They can all go where they want to go and do what they want to do, but San Jose might want to talk to a couple of them about coming back.

Jimmy Bonneau, Dan DaSilva, Lane Scheidl and Kyle Bigos are on AHL contracts. Brock Higgs and Holy Cross' Adam Schmidt are on tryouts and, by the time the season ends, both should have established if they are worth a longer look next year. Scheidl's offseason knee injury cost him a lot, and how could San Jose not want to talk to both Bonneau and DaSilva about returning next year if they are interested?

The tricky part comes with the long list of restricted free agents, generally players with two or three seasons in the AHL. The rules for restricted free agents are complex, but essentially if the Sharks want to keep any of these guys, they can.

It's safe to say that the Sharks already have made up their minds on Petrecki and Stalberg, since they loaned them out to other teams. It's hard to imagine they would not want to take a longer look at Oleksuk, considering how well he has played in the last three months.

Worcester will need defensemen and San Jose tends to be very patient with them — see: Petrecki — but might not want Tennyson, Acolatse, Doherty and Comrie all back. Viedensky, Reid and Sateri are likely all on the bubble given the long looks each already has gotten.

With a schedule top-heavy with home games the rest of the way, the Sharks could miss the playoffs and still finish with the fourth-most victories in the eight years they have been in Worcester. The team's recent surge may make San Jose's decisions more complicated.Are the Sharks just one of several almost-good-enough AHL teams, or are they just a player or two away from being able to compete with the Manchesters, Providences and Springfields that have dominated them for the last couple of seasons?

On this date

Al Stalock posted his 39th win of the season and did it in style as the Sharks blanked the Providence Bruins, 3-0, before a crowd of 7,296 at the DCU Center in 2010. The game was scoreless after one period before Derek Joslin and Steven Zalewski scored to make it 2-0 after 40 minutes. Dan DaSilva got the Sharks' final goal, burying his 21st of the year at 7:24 of the third.

Stuck in a streak

The Sharks are on the verge of joining a select group of AHL teams to which they would rather not belong — those that have missed the Calder Cup playoffs for at least four straight seasons. Worcester will be the 11th to do so, but is not the active leader in terms of a streak. The Adirondack Phantoms will be out of the playoffs for a fifth consecutive season.

The league record is nine years in a row, done by the Springfield Falcons from 2003-04 through 2011-12. The Albany River Rats are second with six straight seasons from 2000-01 through 2005-06. Binghamton was out for five consecutive seasons, from 2005-06 to 2009-10.

The other four-in-a-row franchises that Worcester is likely to join include the Baltimore Skipjacks from 1985-86 to 1988-89, the Quebec Aces from 1959-60 to 1962-63, the Rochester Americans from 1968-69 to 1971-72, the San Antonio Rampage from 2003-04 to 2006-07, the Springfield Indians from 1985-86 to 1988-89, and the St. Louis Flyers from 1944-45 to 1947-48.

Monsters of March

It is league awards time, and the winners are:

Charlotte left wing Zach Boychuk is Player of the Month. He was 9-13-22 in 16 games for the Checkers. Providence's Alexander Khokhlachev is Rookie of the Month. He was 5-12-17 in 12 games.

Wilkes-Barre veteran goalie Peter Mannino is Goaltender of the Month. He started 10 games for the Penguins and was 7-2-1 with a 1.09 goals-against average, .950 save percentage and two shutouts. Goaltender John Muse, Boychuk's teammate at Charlotte, is Player of the Week. He was 4-0-0 with an 0.81 goals-against average and .972 save percentage.

Catching up with...

Longtime IceCats defenseman Rory Fitzpatrick owns the Rochester Hockey Academy near his upstate New York home; Marty Reasoner has gone into the business world and is a partner in Acres Capital, a commercial real estate lending company on Long Island; former IceCats forward Chris Corrinet is also in real estate. The Princeton alum is vice president of CBRE Consulting Group in New York.

Ex-IceCats defenseman Chris McAlpine is a player agent and high school hockey coach in the Minneapolis area; Curtis Sanford tends goal for Yaroslvl Lokomotiv in the KHL; goalie Dan Murphy settled in the Seattle area and is director of goaltending at the Sno-King Hockey instructional program.

Small and smallest

The crowd of 1,544 registered for the Portland game on Tuesday night was the smallest regular-season attendance in Worcester AHL history. Both the smallest and next-to-smallest crowds have come this season. … Mirco Mueller is the first Swiss player to skate for a Worcester team, Sharks or IceCats. He is also just the fifth teenager to get into a game for the Sharks; three of them were on the ice on Tuesday — him, DeMelo and Doherty. … Konrad Abeltshauser bottomed out at minus-12 early in the season and was still minus-11 as recently as Feb. 23. Since then, he has come all the way back to even. … Worcester plays its final road game of the season in Providence on Friday night. The Sharks can't catch the Bruins in the playoff race but cannot afford to lose — a given for every game now. Rob Davison is eligible to return to action, and if Worcester wins, it will finish above .500 on the road for the second straight season. … Congratulations to Freddie Hamilton for becoming just the 15th Sharks player with a 20-goal season. It took him 68 games on the schedule, one more than Kearns last year. The team record: Mathieu Darche scored 20 goals in the first 29 games of the 2006-07 season. … Matt Pelech has never scored more than three goals in a season as a pro and has eight games left to do it this year. One problem — all three of his goals in 2013-14 have come against Portland, and Worcester doesn't play the Pirates again. Pelech is 2-0-2 and plus-4 in his last five games. … Oleksuk is 7-10-17 in the last 16 games.